


Prey

by cinnamon_skull



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Birthday, Jaytim - Freeform, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4375664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamon_skull/pseuds/cinnamon_skull
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Come on, Timmy,” Jason says, tilting his chin up so that Tim can see his maskless face. Those dark blue eyes, usually so steely and cold, are open and studying the planes of Tim’s face. “Even rich boys know that you get one wish on your birthday.”</p><p>Birthday drabble for Tim Drake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GeneratorCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeneratorCat/gifts).



> I'm in deep with JayTim and I don't ever want to stop falling down the rabbit hole. For my kitty cat (generatorcat) for showing me the darkness.

Tim is perched on a roof with his legs hanging off the edge, watching the way the clouds pass over the moon like smoke.

His patrol ended long ago, but it’s the kind of night that begs to be spent lounging under the weight of its darkness, listening to the way the wind whistles through high risers in an eerie lull.

A song of the dead calling to the dead. The streets of Gotham continue on, oblivious and dangerous in their ignorance as always.

Tim thinks it hasn’t been a bad year, not exactly. Same scars, different places. New faces, old conversations. The same dull aching that pulses in tune with his beating heart, no matter how hard Tim tries to bury it in false promises and empty threats.

A revolution. _A reckoning._

Tim wants to crack the earth open, but all paths lead to the same, listless circle, back to where everything started for him. A maze with no center, just endless wrong turns and dead-ends.

The flash of Robin’s resigned smile against bloodstained pavement. The same cruel twist of lips the first time Tim snapped a photo of Red Hood.

A relentless pursuit of the one person that shaped the course of his life so effortlessly, so carelessly, even when his lips still can’t form the shape of that name. A year, and longer, and still Tim can’t shake the ghostly hold that shining red mask had left on his equally crimson heart.

Not love.

No shining, laughing happiness or birds singing. No stupid flash mobs of dancing and no glamorous dinners. Just varying shades of darkness and an oppressive, feverish fog coloring everything Tim did—and most powerfully, the things he didn’t do.

But a kindred hopefulness, such a bone deep understanding that Tim could imagine for a minute how the universe must have been created.

A shadow falls onto him from behind. He’d been expecting—waiting—for it, after all.

“How old are you?” A voice like breaking glass. He can feel the splinters cutting through his skin, and in some twisted way it warms him. A zing of adrenaline shoots through his body, the kind that only means one of two things—it’s time to fight or fuck.

Tim doesn’t feel much like either.

“Does it matter?”

“No, I guess not.” Tim can hear something creeping into the warmth of that voice, and he doesn’t like the way it starts to make him break open like a fresh wound.

There’s a silence while Tim pictures Jason standing behind him, tall and solid, and he knows the facts. It’s his birthday, and they’re looking at the same moon on top of the same roof in the middle of downtown Gotham, but not what it _means_.

Did Jason look older? Had he grown into a stranger? Did his violence color his face and hands, making him red?

“But still,” Jason says, and Tim can feel him move closer from the warmth that starts to pool into his lower back. “You’re forgetting one important part of birthdays.”

Tim feels the toe of Jason’s boot push into his back, until he turns his face to the side, catching him from the corner of his eye. “What’s that?”

Jason crouches in one swift movement, his body leaning so closely into Tim’s space that he wants to flinch back. But he remains stubbornly still, lets Jason trace his jaw with steady fingers until he feels him brush over his Adam’s apple and down the side of his neck.

A rough thumb strokes his collarbone with the precision of a man setting his scope and readying the trigger.

“Come on, Timmy,” he says, tilting his chin up so that Tim can see his maskless face. Those dark blue eyes, usually so steely and cold, are open and studying the planes of Tim’s face. “Even rich boys know that you get one wish on your birthday.”

And it’s the worst thing that Jason could have ever said. There’s a wanting trying to claw its way up Tim’s throat, as slow and natural as the changing of seasons.

“What’s the matter?” Jason presses, and Tim can smell him, like he’s standing at the mouth of a dark alley.

It takes all his willpower to yank his face from Jason’s cold hands. “I can’t think of anything.”

Nothing more than staying like this, forever.

“Maybe you want to blow out the candles first?” For a wild moment, Tim thinks that Jason is about to take his hand and press it against his chest and then down, to the heat between his legs.

But he doesn’t do anything, just stares until Tim’s throat goes dry. “I can’t think of anything,” Tim repeats and feels like he’s swallowing around the barrel of a gun.

“Can’t or won’t?”

There’s a rush of air as Jason stands, one fluid motion that makes Tim snap his neck up. He’s all but kneeling at Jason’s feet, a position he’s been fighting for most of his life.

Jason’s fingers are back, running down Tim’s arm until he finds his wrist. He pulls Tim up so that he’s standing in front of him, on the edge of the roof. Then brings his hand up, slowly removing Tim’s glove until his fingers are bare under the moonlight.

“Jason,” Tim warns. Pleads. Promises. He isn’t in control of his voice any more than wearing a watch makes him in control time.

Jason shuts his eyes for a moment at the sound of his name. It’s something Tim hasn’t said out loud in a long time–maybe not ever. When his eyes snap open, Tim sees something like his own soul reflected there.

But there aren’t any words, not for either of them, as Jason brings Tim’s hand to his mouth. He ghosts along the skin with hot, humid breath until his lips are hovering over Tim’s wildly beating pulse. Jason’s eyes never leave his.

And then he presses his lips to the inside of Tim’s wrist, achingly slow and hard.

Tim feels like Jason’s mouth is filled with live wires, burning into his flesh and filling him up with an electric heat.

No wishes, just the sound of electricity crackling in the spaces between their bodies, gentle and rhythmic, a magnetic field molding around the places where they’re connected.

Jason kisses his wrist again and again, letting his lips do the talking. Tim is trapped in the silent words Jason brands into his skin, and rooted to the spot when he feels Jason’s teeth scrape lightly over his pulse.

Maybe he didn’t get his wish, but it’s true that no one delivers birthday presents quite like Jason Todd.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr for more random jaytim drabbles. cinnamonskull.tumblr.com.


End file.
